Not quite as elaborate as all that, one of these days I want to play a Tibbitt spellcaster, using the Leadership feat to gain a humanoid follower, the Tibbitt can pretend to be a familiar, and the follower pretends to be the brains of the operation when he's really just taking orders.

In one of my games I've speculated using the Leadership feat (which I never wanted but it was a requirement for a prestige class I wanted) and just using the followers to make money and consumable items for me through using their craft and professions.

I've also had the idea of using the leadership feat to recruit a cohort someone who also has the leadership feat (if my DM would let me customize the cohort) to have a small army, however I dropped it and never mentioned it since I'd be crucified and burned if I ever so much as asked if I could do that.

One might also use the feat to make the character pretend to be someone really famous or rich, going around with a large posse to help you draw attention and such.

I've just had an idea that may offend certain peoples so I'm putting it in a spoiler.

Use the Leadership feat to have your own submissive (and no Shades of Grey is a terrible representation of the sub/dom relationship and a VERY stilted view of BDSM culture as a whole. A good dom takes care of their sub and actually takes the needs of their sub into consideration but that's a whole other rant). If your character's evil inclined, replace sub with (sex) slave.